Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day006.14
Last-Modified: 2000/08/02
Q. Not only did Himmler take a risk that what he said to that
bunch of Generals on 5th May might get back to the Fuhrer
and he, Himmler, get a rocket, he said it again on 24th,
did he not?
. P-122
A. Can we see in exactly what terms?
Q. Yes, you can. It is the next document, 188. Here I do
not think I have the whole document. The first three
pages, well, let us look at the front of it, first of
all. It is translated, my Lord, on page 74 of Longerich,
Longerich 1, or the relevant part is. It is a speech in
the Reichsfuhrer SS on 24th. The date has been altered
suggesting that it was going to be on some other date, do
you agree? This is interesting. We will come to that in
a minute. You see the date at the top has been altered?
A. What are you looking at?
Q. Document 188 in the file, H4 (ii). It is the next
following document.
A. Yes.
Q. It is the speech of 24th May 1944 again at Sonthofen?
A. Yes.
Q. Can you translate the rest of the heading, please?
A. "Speech of the Reichsfuhrer SS on 24th May 1944 at
Sonthofen to the participants in a political
ideological
course (Army Generals)".
Q. Can you turn over the page to the next page in the
file?
A. In the document or in the...?
Q. In the actual document we have?
A. Yes.
Q. Such part of it as we have?
A. Page 2.
. P-123
Q. Page 2 at the top. In brackets you have: "RF SS
Sonthofen", I do not know, but it looks to me as if
that
date has been changed from 25th or some later date to
24th?
A. The typist has it wrong on the first three pages and
it
has been subsequently amended in manuscript or
corrected
in manuscript.
Q. In places it has been amended, in places it is
correct.
A. Because by the time she has got to page 4 or 5, she
has
realized what the right date should be.
Q. What do you think the right date was is what I am
asking.
Can you read it? I cannot.
A. 24th May.
Q. No, I know what the handwriting says. The overwritten
typescript looks to me like 25th.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: Does it matter?
MR RAMPTON: It might do, yes.
A. We have Himmler's diary for that date, his calendar,
which shows clearly the speech was on this date.
Q. That is right. If you look at page 32 as it has at
the
top, again the page numbering has been altered by
hand?
A. Yes.
Q. There it is typed correctly, 24.5.44?
A. Yes.
Q. The very next page it is wrong again?
A. Yes.
. P-124
Q. That suggests, does it not, that these pages are for
the
final version of the transcript, if that is what this
is,
done, as it were, at different times, some have the
right
date, some have the wrong date. Is it not odd, Mr
Irving,
if they are transcripts rather than drafts, that they
have
different dates on them originally?
A. Well, I have employed secretaries and you have
probably
too and dates are frequently things that are wrongly
entered.
Q. So the fact that one page or another has a date
altered
and another does not, the fact that some pages are in
different typefaces, tells us nothing except that
different people did different pages?
A. That is a possible interpretation, yes, but, of
course, it
is precisely these pages that these phenomena occur.
Q. Yes. Well, it goes on -- my copy does not,
unfortunately
-- the key page in this document is 31, four pages
into
the extract that we have got.
A. Yes.
Q. And the passage in question is at the bottom of that
page,
is it not?
A. Yes.
Q. I am going to read from Longerich's translation?
A. These are three pages where the pagination has been
amended.
Q. No. It is amended on this page, but not on the next
. P-125
succeeding page. Do you see? The pagination has but
not
the date?
A. Yes, the pagination.
Q. Pagination has but not the date?
A. Well, it might be a clue as to when the retyping was
done. She may have been retyping it the next day for
some
reason and the way you do when you are writing cheques
out, you get the date wrong at the beginning of a
year.
Q. That is right. The dating on this page that we are
looking at has been altered in manuscript in exactly
the
same way as the preceding three pages that we have,
have
been and they are the first three pages of the speech,
are
they not?
A. Yes.
Q. So that suggests, no more than suggests, in fact, ever
so
faintly suggests, a chronological integrity?
A. It suggests to me that whoever has retyped these pages
did
so on 25th and hen realized her error when she looked
at
the dates and then changed 25th to 24th.
Q. Look at the last page.
A. I am not sure that it is important.
Q. Well, I think it is. Look on to the last page we
have,
page 33. Both the date and the page have been
altered,
have they not?
A. Yes.
Q. Now look at the page in question, which is the fourth
page
. P-126
we have?
A. Yes.
Q. The last paragraph, and I am going to read from
Dr Longerich's translation?
A. Is this page 32 or 31?
Q. 31, sorry. "Another question which was decisive", I
am
reading from the beginning of the last paragraph of
the
German, "for the inner insecurity of the Reich in
Europe
was the Jewish question. It was uncompromisingly
solved
after orders and rational recognition"?
A. "On orders", I would say.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: It should be in the singular.
A. Well, "Rachsmehfahr" (?) would be "on orders", my
Lord.
MR RAMPTON: "On orders" or "in accordance with orders"?
A. Yes.
Q. Following in the sense of "in obedience to"?
A. "In accordance with".
Q. Yes. Again, the same point, is it not, Himmler does
not
take orders from anybody but Hitler, does he?
A. His men do. The men who carried out the orders were
taking orders from somebody, namely from him.
Q. I see. You are suggesting that this is a reference by
Himmler ----
A. It is.
Q. --- to the orders which he gave to his subordinates?
A. It is ambiguous. It is totally ambiguous, Mr Rampton,
. P-127
this particular passage. It could be him referring to
orders he had received or orders that his men had
received.
Q. In that case, there would be no reason, would there,
for
this page to be altered in case Hitler should see it
and
blow up?
A. Yes, we are in no man's land here.
Q. I will read on because it is, perhaps you may agree, a
rather significant document: "I believe, gentlemen,
that
you know me well know enough to know that I am not a
bloodthirsty person I am not a man who takes pleasure
or
joy when something rough must be done. However, on
the
other hand, I have such good nerves and such a
developed
sense of duty I could say that much for myself."
"Developed sense of duty" is the words Grosses flicht
flift berwusstein".
A. Yes, conscious of his duty. "Berwusstein" is
consciousness.
Q. "When I recognize something as necessary, I can
implement
it without compromise. I have not considered myself
entitled, this concerns especially the Jewish women
and
children, to allow the children to grow into the
avengers
who will then murder our fathers and our
grandchildren.
That would have been cowardly. Consequently, the
question
was uncompromisingly resolved".
A. This is the Himmler gramophone record. He keeps on
saying
. P-128
it in speeches at this time. This is the only
occasion
and the one previously where he hints at an order.
Normally, he swallows it, so to speak, he bites his
tongue.
Q. There we have two speeches, subject to your point
about
what I call your speculation about the reason why the
pages change or the typeface changes. Then we have
two
speeches which say unequivocally really, especially if
you
put them together, that the mass murder of the Jews,
the
women and the children, was done by Himmler on
Hitler's
orders, do you not? That is what they say on their
face?
A. No.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: When you say two orders you mean the 4th
May
or whenever it was?
MR RAMPTON: Yes, 5th May. If you put them together ----
MR JUSTICE GRAY: And 24th May?
A. 24th May.
MR RAMPTON: --- what he is clearly saying, and I am
paraphrasing, but this is the interpretation which any
right minded person would give to these documents on
their
face, Himmler is telling the Generals, as if they did
not
already know, "We have murdered all these people. It
was
a hard task, but we have done it. We have been
successful
and we did it on the orders of the Fuhrer"?
A. We have to look at the entire body of these speeches,
Mr Rampton, and say why is it that he hints at on
order in
. P-129
these two speeches, if we ignore the discrepancy in
the
pagination and so on at moment, but in none of the
other
speeches? It is almost as though he had run his mouth
off
here. He is not speaking from a prepared script.
It was a very common trick in Nazi Germany,
as
in all dictatorships, to imply that you are doing
something on the highest orders, "So you had better
not
question what I am up to, fellows", and I think it was
entirely proper, the use that I made of this in my
book on
pages 630 and 631, looking at the original edition,
and
I felt it entirely proper to refer in a two-and-a-half
line footnote to the fact that there is some reason to
note that the two pages concerned in both speeches,
both
appear to have been retyped on a different occasion,
shall
we say.
Q. Well, that is can be said of a whole lot of pages in
that
set which I have only got them all there, I have only
about six pages?
A. Mr Rampton, not in any of the other speeches, only in
these speeches and these sections.
Q. Maybe they were important speeches, I do not know.
A. The difference between me and Mr Browning and the
other
experts is that I sat with the original papers in my
hand,
looking at the quality, the texture of the paper,
whether
it was a carbon copy or a ribbon copy, and so on.
Q. We explored that. I did say on their face they appear
to
. P-130
be a reference to orders from Hitler to do that which
had
been done by the time these speeches were made, do
they
not?
A. This is precisely why I quoted both speeches in full,
those passages on pages 630 and 631 of my biography,
so
readers could draw their own conclusions.
Q. That impression which one might take away from reading
those two speeches is unsurprising, is it not, if one
looks at what Himmler wrote to Berger on 28th July
1942.
My Lord, we have looked at this document before.
A. "This is a task which the Fuhrer has given us and
which no
one can take off my shoulders", is it not?
Q. "Die besezten auf gebeten Judenfrage" -- "The occupied
Eastern territories must be Jew-free"?
A. "Will become free of Jews".
Q. "Will become Jew-free", "free of Jews". "The carrying out
of this very hard order has been placed on my shoulders by
the Fuhrer". That is right? That is what the German
says?
A. Absolutely right.

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